Adding the losses

Life is a series of losses.

Since her aneurysm, Jan has experienced a series of hard losses. Consider what she lost: her speech, full movement and sensation on her right side, previous to the aneurysm she lost 80% of vision on her right eye, she lost her job, her driver's license, her independence, her ability to remember short term happenings, her ability to teach, her ability to read fast, her ability to write with clarity, but most poignantly, she lost most of her friends.

To the struggle to recover more speech and movement, she finds herself struggling with loneliness and isolation.

Some days, she looks and feels as someone who has been condemned to solitary confinement for months or years. She craves company, but few people are available to giver her time. She can't remember to call and make appointments, and everyone seems too busy to call her.

With a few exceptions, she suffers the loss of her many friends.

On the bright side, she has been experimenting with life without medications. It's been almost three months since she stopped taking medications for seizure control. Right now she is flying solo.

Given that in the past she had seizures every three months, and that the first part of October is about the time when the cycle is complete, she is anxiously waiting to see if there will be a seizure or if she has somehow been able to overcome the seizures. She believes this is a stage, that the seizures and the aphasia will somehow disappear.

So, to the loss of friends, she has freedom from drugs.

Life seems to be also full of gains.

FC